The Moment of June
by Davide Trame
Your hour of lesson, by now you’ve got accustomed
to the students’ whispering, the unending rustling,
the nodding, living leaves of your day.
In the dead of winter,
the classroom bathed in a pearly light.
Faces trying composure and failing, eventually,
you know well the unrestrained beam
in each pair of eyes, each sprightly glance
ready to catch the first germ of fun
in the slightest jerk or sound, in the most
inadvertent nuance in a voice.
Teaching, you touch their cheekbones
with your gaze, they are tight and nimble,
cheetahs in a field of flowers
ready to outrun you, legs blurring
in the stalks, in a roar like laughter,
of dust and sky.
Two girls in the last row,
happy for some reason, have just sprung,
fast, nimble. They have kissed
fully each other on the cheek as if,
despite the gloomy clouds, a sunbeam
had broken in from the window.
I stare at them, I try to be serious:
“ Control yourselves please, we are at school”,
but then, continuing, the joke comes
and I can’t resist:
“This is certainly not the place for gay pride.”
So, an instant laugh, in the whole class.
Leaving school, at the door, in the cold wind
I meet the two again, they are walking
arm in arm on the black rubber path back from the gym,
they look at me and at once one kisses
her friend’s cheek, again, a loud smack
reverberating in the empty corridor:
“See, we love each other”. And they run away,
laughter filling the walls.
And I, I can’t resist a smile
being sure this is what I will remember of them
in the years after they will have left,
not their papers, nor their grades,
but this, their bursting, loud sun on the black
rubber path.
In the dead of winter.
Their moment of June.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:09 am
ah , yes , the truth of it all . What we remember are the small trivia that seem to strike a chord of happiness in us all , is it not ?
I love the way you describe the classroom and lead us to the philosophical ending of the poem
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